THE DESIGN OF A METADATA SCHEMA FOR VACATION SNAPSHOTS

By:

Aaron, Adrian, Anne & Ed’d

The Concept• Design a metadata schema to support the needs and

users of a hypothetical photo sharing site with commercial applications and social functions

Primary Web Site Goals• Give photographers the ability to share travel photos• Give photographers the option to sell their favorite images• Connect photo buyers with photographers

Who might use this site?• We Identified four Stakeholders and Users

• The Website Owners : seeks to maximize number of users sharing and selling photography

• Photographers : want to share photography and possibly make some $

• General Users : needs ability to easily browse and view images related to their interests

• Buyers : needs to locate and purchase images to fit their project needs

How We Identified User Needs• Examined search interfaces and metadata schemes used

by other photo sharing, and stock photography sites.

• Also examined the portfolios of travel photographers and websites devoted to travel photo contests

The Primary Intellectual Challenges

Challenge 1: Need to strike balance between devising an overly descriptive metadata scheme and a less descriptive one that could be easily and quickly used by non-library science type people.

Challenge 2: So how do you actually get someone to index a photo?

Our Solutions• Let’s reduce user input by leveraging technology to

capture metadata already within the image• Let’s harness the power of the mob to supplement

user’s indexing with keywords and image ratings• Let’s make an incentive based design

…A what???• An Incentive Based Design: our design trades greater

functionality for additional descriptive metadata.

• Based around 3 Primary Steps…

Step 1 : Account Registration• We’ll require one-time registration to upload and share

images.

• (This provides name for photographer field which we’ll associate with every photo they ever upload and share with us)

Step 2: Album Creation and Upload• This process allows the photographer to quickly create

and upload an album of photos.• To do so, we require an album name and the major region

where photos were snapped. • Several other fields are optionally available• Using technology, we can retrieve data related to eight

additional elements

Step 3: Let’s make some $$$• In order to sell image, photographer required to further

describe image. • From this process, we’ll glean information related to the

image category, scene, and whether the image has been digitally altered.

Other ways metadata applied

• Social Metadata (image ratings and keywords)

* can be applied anytime by anyone

Some simple concepts of what this site might look like….

Create Album Page

View Album

Sell Image

Details of Metadata Scheme

• Our metadata scheme is comprised of 21 elements and makes use of two existing CVs and one original one.

• For all shared images, user provides data related to three required elements.

• Using technology, we obtain information to populate up to 8 additional elements.

• For purchasable images, we’ll require information related to 4 additional elements.

Metadata Relationship to User

• Photographer name: aggregates related photos for viewers who admire or want to see more work from same photographer.

• Caption: provides free form text description of image useful for searching.

• Creation date: facilities searches that may reveal photos related to specific events, holidays, or season.

Metadata Relationship to User

• Upload date: allows users to restrict searches for new images only.

• Image resolution and size: indicates if image can be printed in larger sizes.

• Keywords : helps identify gaps in descriptive categories and allows 3rd party indexing enhances image’s findability.

• Location : primary access point for searches.

Metadata Relationship to User

• Scene : describes composition and picture taking techniques.

• Album : useful for bringing together related images. Unlike physical counterparts, image may be found in multiple albums.

• Rating : individual ratings of image helps consolidate viewpoints of many to indicate image’s popularity or perceived quality.

Challenges• Devising Broad Categories and related sub-categories• Confusion on adopting or extending VRA Metadata or

devising own standard that had some shared elements, but many differences.

• Limiting scope of project; design can not be implemented without answering number of significant business questions.